Page:The English Peasant.djvu/115

 above the sea-level. From one end to the other hung a rainbow. On the other side the sun was setting, softly touching with its golden light Muker Ridge, a great sweep of moorland. From White Beacon Hags to Gil's Head, for so they call the crests which rise at either end of this moorland ridge, lay a bank of soft white cloud. No sound but the roar of waterfalls disturbed the stillness of the Sabbath eve.

The roar of waterfalls!—ay, indeed!—for nigh to Keld are some of the finest to be seen. I have spoken of Cataract Force, which is immediately behind the village. Onward the Swale continues its troubled way, until it passes under a little antique stone bridge. Here West Stonesdate Beck comes rushing into the Swale in a fine series of falls. Then the river winds on through a stony ravine, where the rocks rise like the walls of an old fortress,—

It pours down here in two magnificent waterfalls, called Kisdon Higher and Lower Force. To see them in their glory it is necessary to descend to the bed of the river. This was no easy task, since one side is precipitous rock, and the other a slippery soil and tangled underwood, but it was a sight fully repaying every exertion. Huge rocks, thirty or forty feet high, had fallen down, and lay strewn about the stream. The ridge of the limestone wall to the right was crowned with foliage; indeed, both sides are well wooded, trees growing wherever they can find earth to root themselves. Ferns of rarest kinds, mosses, and wild flowers, adorn in profusion the boggy declivities, while on the clammy sides of the ravine one may see the mosses gradually petrifying under the perpetual drip. But the fall itself, seen in such weather, is stupendous. Its immense volume comes pouring over the rocks, ploughing the solid bed of the river, and steaming up again in clouds of spray, the froth settling into thick clots on both sides. Up again we have to scramble, now climbing from stone step to stone step, until we reach the Higher Force, where the waters fall in a huge peat-stained cataract.

On my road back I followed the course of the Swale, having